(L-R) AMBER TAMBLYN stars as Tibby, ALEXIS BLEDEL stars as Lena, AMERICA FERRERA stars as Carmen and BLAKE LIVELY stars as Bridget in Alcon Entertainment?s drama ?The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2,? distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.PHOTOGRAPHS TO BE USED SOLELY FOR ADVERTISING, PROMOTION, PUBLICITY OR REVIEWS OF THIS SPECIFIC MOTION PICTURE AND TO REMAIN THE PROPERTY OF THE STUDIO. NOT FOR SALE OR REDISTRIBUTION.

Amber Tamblyn totally gets why people are suspicious of her writing abilities.

"There's this underlying belief that actors are really shallow," she says with obvious exasperation. "And I think that is catastrophically bull-. It's incredibly unfair because there's a lot of brilliant actors and actresses out there."

Tamblyn, 25, was an Emmy and Golden Globe nominee for "Joan of Arcadia," the 2003-2005 TV series. She's one of the quartet of actresses in the "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" film franchise and has a part in the forthcoming movie comedy "Spring Breakdown" with Amy Poehler, Parker Posey and Rachel Dratch.

But mention the fact that she's a serious poet, or her 2005 poetry collection, "Free Stallion" (Simon & Schuster), and her fellow writers cry dilettante. "The poetry online world is singularly unimpressed," one blogger snarled. "I can assure you that as a poet, Amber Tamblyn is a fine Sitcom actress."

Tamblyn, who says she started writing poems at age 10, will appear Oct. 3 at the Herbst Theatre when Litquake, the annual San Francisco literary festival, opens its nine-day showcase with an evening of storytelling. Produced in conjunction with the Porch Light storytelling series, the evening groups Tamblyn with writers Cintra Wilson ("Colors Insulting to Nature"), Neal Pollack ("Alternadad"), April Sinclair ("Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice"), Robert Mailer Anderson ("Boonville"), political comic Will Durst and Adam Savage, co-host of the Discovery Channel program "MythBusters."

Each writer has to get up and tell a story, without benefit of notes. The theme is "Suckered: Writers Confess a Profound Lack of Judgment."

Tamblyn, who spoke from her home in Venice Beach, said she got involved with the festival when a friend, poet/comedian Bucky Sinister, called to say Porch Light co-founder Beth Lisick wanted to book her for Litquake.

"I saw some of her readings and poetry online, and we have a lot of mutual friends," says Lisick. "She is really talented. A lot of her stuff is funny but also has a kind of ethereal quality. And her performance style is very casual and not over-the-top, which I liked."

Tamblyn is the daughter of Russ Tamblyn, 73, an actor/dancer who appeared in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" and "West Side Story" and had a comeback in the early '90s on David Lynch's warped TV series "Twin Peaks."

"I grew up around a lot of artists from all different disciplines," she says. "Dean Stockwell is a very close friend of my dad. Neil Young, as well. These people were all big in my life."

Another family friend was San Francisco poet Jack Hirschman. "He was my mentor. I would send him a packet of poems and he would sort of brutally take them apart, which I needed. He'd say, 'This is good' or 'This is crap' or 'You know this isn't true.' He's always been a strong voice for me."

Those men took Tamblyn and her writing seriously but the pop-culture world, inevitably, views her as an actress struggling for a credibility she doesn't deserve. "Celebrityism," she says, has driven actors to seek alternate forms of expression at the same time it's made the public more cynical.

With so much focus on celebrities, she says, "It's become this grotesque thing. So young actors, especially, feel like, 'Oh man, I have to do something.' 'I have to be a writer' or 'I have to be an art collector.' 'I have to show that I'm worth more.'

"I understand that," she says. "I understand people saying, 'Oh God, it's another celebrity trying to write poetry. What is she going to talk about - how fat her bank account is?' But if that guy (who called her "a sitcom actress") learned one thing about me, he would know that I grew up like that. I grew up in that family atmosphere, and I was a writer before I was an actress."

Finding time for both loves is difficult: "It's kind of like two cars, a writer and an actress at the same time. And one of the cars switched into high gear and took off. And that was my acting career."

With so many acting gigs in the past two years, "I haven't been able to write a whole lot. I have a manuscript that's finished, kind of, and I've really just been sort of trying to find a theme. I'm kind of scared to put it out there right now, to be honest."

Litquake: Runs through Oct. 11. Various Bay Area venues. Free admission for most events. For a full schedule, go to www.litquake.org/the-festival.

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